Bear in mind, that I would answer this differently about Bitcoin efficiency and energy usage if the question would be asked in a different manner, BUT:<p>While some claim that it's a "yes", it's actually a NO.<p>Bitcoin doesn't care (or people mining it) about environmental impact. Heck, most of the people in general do not care about environment.<p>Currently, the entire community is riding a speculative hype train to earn money, not to save the planet. Also, most miners (one of the most influential groups in Bitcoin) are based in China - does that strike you as an environment-savvy place?<p>This question reeks of the Californian idealogical bubble. What's next? Is Bitcoin diverse enough?
Maybe not necessarily the Bitcoin community, but other cryptos are figuring other solutions to fix this problem. One of these solutions is the Proof of Stake [0] instead of Bitcoin's Proof of Work.<p>Perhaps after all Bitcoin coins have been mined (currently around 17.000.000 mined, 21.000.0000 total IIRC), not much energy would be needed afterwards, for Bitcoin at least?<p>---<p>[0]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-stake" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-stake</a>
This isn't exactly the Bitcoin community per se, but Ethereum is working on a proof-of-stake algorithm to replace proof-of-work. This is a much less energy intensive intensive algorithm, and while I'm a bit skeptical that it's as secure as proof-of-work, I'm glad they are trying something.
Yes, both within the formal Bitcoin Community, and extending to the larger crypto asset business space. There are a few broad initiatives that I know of, forwarded by different groups:<p>* Tennet and Sonnen collaboration to stabilize European power supplies with renewable sources; built on IBM’s blockchain tech[0]<p>* New tokens with “green” focuses and schemes, represented by SolarCoin, KWhcoin, EverGreenCoin.<p>* Significant research into “proof-of-anything-but-work” hashing schemes, as previously mentioned by others in the thread. This includes long-running experiments such as Peercoin.<p>* I count the on-going efficiency gains made by the major mining hardware suppliers. That work isn’t altruism, sure, but arguably more efficient miners are better for the environment...though more efficient miners can also be run in denser clusters, so let’s call this one a wash.<p>* Anecdoteally, I’ve heard of direct seed and early stage investments by people I know in the community to bootstrap renewables. Partially because they are “pet” interests, partially because they were early miners and would like to find a way to bring a cost effective and sustainable electrical source to the networks they contribute to.<p>——-<p><a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tennet-sonnen-ibm-renewable-energy/" rel="nofollow">https://www.coindesk.com/tennet-sonnen-ibm-renewable-energy/</a>
If you look at Bitcoin as a store of value like gold, the energy consumption is actually not that high.<p>From a wired post<p><i>But in his paper, Vranken counters that in the 100MW to 500MW range, bitcoin mining requires between 0.8KWh to 4.4KWh per year, but the energy required for mining and recycling gold – which backs US currency – is 138KWh a year, while printing paper notes and minting coins is 11KWh.</i><p><a href="http://www.wired.co.uk/article/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-mining-really-use" rel="nofollow">http://www.wired.co.uk/article/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-...</a>
Most initiatives, businesses and factories doesn't care until there's a risk of paying a fine, a way to make additional profit or a way of cutting costs. Why would Bitcoin be any different?
What would you suggest?<p>The currency -- like the internet is so decentralised it could survive a nuclear apocalypse. Even attempting to corral this into an some environmentally friendly structure is far beyond trying to herd cats.<p>The problem isn't Bitcoin -- it's using fossil fuels for energy -- solve this at a global level and the Bitcoin issue is solved as well.
Scalability solutions should help (SegWit and Lightning Network), but energy cost is closely related to the potential gains.<p>Other crypto currencies use Proof of Stake instead of Proof of Work for consensus. I think one of them will emerge as a better technical solution and will dethrone Bitcoin.
I wrote an article on this topic:<p><a href="https://hackernoon.com/dummies-guide-to-bitcoin-energy-use-5f38e91c3253" rel="nofollow">https://hackernoon.com/dummies-guide-to-bitcoin-energy-use-5...</a>
Andreas has given his point of view about the matter recently:<p><a href="https://youtu.be/2T0OUIW89II" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/2T0OUIW89II</a>
Bitcoin doesn't have this problem. Each mined block have limited bitcoins in reward and bitcoin price won't skyrocket to the infinity, so sum of all miner expenses is limited by some fixed number, nobody would spend their money and mine with negative result.